AOL Reverses Whitelist Decision

AOL will not do away with its Enhanced Whitelist, a spokesman for the company told DM News on Friday, only days after the company said the whitelist would be phased out as it added Goodmail CertifiedEmail.

"The Enhanced Whitelist is going to remain a useful tool. People who are on today will continue to use [its] privileges and benefits," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said.

AOL reversed its decision on the whitelist after numerous e-mail senders and providers lashed out against the company in blogs and public statements. One e-mail executive compared the AOL-Goodmail decision to a tax on e-mail.

Though Graham would not acknowledge that AOL received negative comments on the matter, he said the company had many discussions "internally as well as externally" in the past week.

AOL still expects to make changes to the Enhanced Whitelist, hopefully by June 30, to close some loopholes in the system for spammers, but it first will "re-engage the stakeholders again," Graham said.

Also, AOL said it is not backing off its relationship with authentication provider Goodmail.

"We hope that people will slowly come off the Enhanced Whitelist and sign up with Goodmail," Graham said.